Watership Down .. and the mission of God

One of the mythic literary tales involving liminality and communitas is Richard Adam’s Watership Down. Fiver, a small nervous rabbit, has a premonition something terrible is going to happen to their Sandleford warren. And he’s right; a housing developer is planning to build on their field. Fiver tells his brother Hazel and they try to warn their aging Chief Rabbit, to no avail—he doesn’t believe them. Hazel and Fiver decide they must leave, and are joined by other rabbits in their search for a new home. And no sooner than they have left, the bulldozers come and destroy the warrens and all the other rabbits. To cut the long story short, the adventure takes the rabbits out of the safety of their warrens where they do very un-rabbitlike things; like crossing rivers, fields, and roads. (Rabbits, like the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings, seldom travel far from their burrows.) At nights, out of their burrows, and feeling very insecure, they comfort and encourage each other by re-telling tales of the adventures of the great rabbit hero; El-Ahrairah and they are inspired by his story to continue their journey. They come across many other warrens and they try to warn them. They even get imprisoned and escape, but they eventually do get to Watership Down which becomes their new home, and once they find females to mate with, they settle down and start again.
Once again, this children’s fantasy accesses universally mythic ideas related to adventure, the role of danger in personal growth, leadership, communitas, and the innate capacity of life to adapt when threatened by mortal danger. To my mind, this myth-laced story challenges us to get out of our burrows because of the coming danger (the adaptive challenge) and do things that defy our all too human instincts to burrow down in denial and our middleclass penchant for safety and security. We are inspired for this task by re-telling of the dangerous stories of Jesus Christ, the martyrs, and the great witnesses of the faith who did exactly the same things. All our heroes are people, who refused to settle down, people who lived dangerously, and who by doing so significantly advanced the mission of God.

I was directed to Alan Hirsch's blog in an email from a friend. He said that it was worth pondering .. and it is! I've already found my old copy of the book and added it to the list of books to read in the January break.